Contact centers are generally known. Such centers are typically used as a means of facilitating contact between an organization using the contact center and large numbers of persons through the Internet or through conventional telephone systems.
Contact centers have generally evolved from call centers. Call-centers typically include at least three elements: an automatic call distributor (ACD), a group of agents for handling the calls, and a host computer containing customer information. The individual agents of the groups of agents are each typically provided with a telephone console and a computer terminal. The telephone terminal is used to deliver customer calls distributed to the agent by the ACD. The terminal may be used to retrieve customer records from the host.
Contact centers have typically been segregated to one or only a very few sites. Such segregation has been preferred to simplify the supervision of agents and to reduce the cost of the infrastructure needed to provide an agent with a telephone and to connect an agent terminal to the customer database.
More recently, it has become possible for agents to telecommute through a variety of communications system innovations. For example, the availability of integrated digital service network (ISDN) connections has allowed the telecommuting agent to use one ISDN connection for voice traffic while a second ISDN channel is used for data.
While the ability of agents to telecommute has drastically increased the pool of agents available to service the needs of businesses, the costs of the infrastructure needed to support and house a contact center have remained prohibitively high in an environment of declining profits. Accordingly, a need exists for a means of implementing the functionality of a call center without the infrastucture required by conventional call centers.